2016-05-25 07:27:05
Imagine realising that you ve spent your whole life unable to visualise
anything in your mind. Helen Thomson speaks to a 42-year-old man whose internal
world is pictureless.
By Helen Thomson
25 May 2016
Close your eyes and visualise the face of the person you love the most. The
colour of their eyes, the texture of their hair, the detail of their skin. Can
you imagine it? Philip can t.
Although Philip, a 42-year old photographer from Toronto, is happily married,
he can t conjure up his wife s face because he has no images of any kind in his
mind s eye. When he thinks about a face, it comes to him as an idea, as an
intellectual concept, rather than a mental picture.
This newly described condition is called aphantasia and has prompted scientists
to reexamine an experience that we so often take for granted our imagination.
What s more, studying it is offering new insights into how we all might boost
our visual imagery to improve our memory, increase our empathy and even gain
new treatments for conditions like addiction and anxiety.
Aphantasia was first discovered in 1880, but has recently attracted much more
attention thanks to a 2015 study by Adam Zeman at the University of Exeter and
colleagues, who investigated the claims of 21 people who were unable to summon
images to their mind s eye.
Some of Zeman s case studies reported the occasional flash of involuntary
imagery during wake and sleep, even though they claimed to not be able to
produce images on demand. The majority also reported problems with remembering
things that happened in their past, possibly compensating for their lack of
imagery by having a tendency to be good at maths, logic and verbal tasks.
I never realised that people could see images in their mind... I thought they
just meant figuratively
Philip is a prime example. When he is asleep, his dreams are made up of the
same visual images that we all experience, but during waking hours he finds it
impossible to conjure up a mental picture of anything. When I close my eyes I
see my eyelids. It s just blank, he says. I never realised that people could
see images in their mind when they were awake. When they said imagine this or
count sheep I thought they just meant figuratively.
If you are able to generate internal images, it s very hard to imagine what
life is like without them. To understand the blind mind s eye, it may be
helpful to think about an abstract concept such as peace . There are no
obvious literal images that are drawn to mind (apart from a metaphorical
image like a dove perhaps) yet you are able to understand and imagine what
peace is.
When Philip tries to picture a face, he knows intellectually what structures it
involves, but he can t visualise it in any way. It s very hard to explain what
happens when I think about things like that, he says. If I try to picture my
father s face, for example, I would know that he had blue eyes or the size of
his nose, but I wouldn t be able to describe it in any more detail than that
I can t bring his face to mind. I see nothing.
Picture this
To understand the differences in each of our mental images, we have to be able
to measure them but it s inherently difficult to analyse the private goings
on in someone s mind. Joel Pearson at the University of New South Wales has
found the answer: not only can he objectively measure our imagination, but he
can manipulate it too.
Not only can he objectively measure imagination, but he can manipulate it too
He does so using binocular rivalry . This is a simple task in which a person
is briefly presented with two different images say, green stripes and red
spots. One image is shown to the left eye, the other image to the right eye.
The brain can t merge the two pictures into one cohesive image, and instead one
image gets suppressed outside of our awareness, while the other is perceived.
You can manipulate which image is perceived by priming the brain to one or
other of the images. You do this by showing one of the images to the person
just before the task. That image is then more likely to be perceived when both
images are viewed at once.
The same phenomenon happens when you ask a participant to imagine one of the
images. This image is then more likely to be perceived in subsequent tasks. And
the more vivid your imagination, the more likely you ll see that same image in
the following experiment. Over hundreds of trials, Pearson can use this
phenomenon to work out just how good your imagination really is.
That explains it
Philip only recently discovered that he experienced the world differently after
hearing a podcast presenter describing aphantasia and the inability to see
mental images. It came as a complete surprise, he says. I was like what do
you mean? People do that? He thought it was a joke, so he checked with his
four-year old daughter. I asked her whether she could picture an apple in her
mind, she said yeah, it s green . I was shocked.
Suddenly, so many things in his life made sense. He had always had a
notoriously bad memory. I m awful at remembering people s names and faces
but now I know that other people can just picture what everyone looks like then
of course that s why they find it easier to remember that kind of stuff.
He also has trouble finding his car in a car park probably because he can t
picture where he has left it. I always have to take a picture of the car or
write down a shop that it is near otherwise I spend an hour searching for it.
Boosting your imagination
In a recent study, Pearson s team analysed the brain mechanisms at work while
someone uses their mind s eye to produce mental images. They discovered that
the size of a person s visual cortex the part of the brain responsible for
perceiving images correlated with how strong their mental imagery was. In
unpublished work presented at The Eye s Mind conference in Norwich, UK this
month, Pearson also described how people have stronger imagery when brain cells
in this area are less active.
That kind of knowledge allows his team to develop experiments in which they can
manipulate the activity of these brain cells using non-invasive brain
stimulation to change the strength of a person s mental imagery.
It s easy to imagine how the research could allow people to boost their mental
imagery
In doing so, they hope that they might be able to decrease the intrusive mental
images that are symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, addiction and
post-traumatic stress disorder. Maybe we could tone down some of that imagery,
says Pearson.
On the other hand, Pearson says it might also be possible to bump up someone s
visual imagery. It s easy to imagine that people might want to boost their
mental imagery to improve other aspects of cognition in which it is involved,
he says. We know, for example, that we can improve our memory by conjuring
vivid images to mind. And that preventing people from producing mental pictures
affects their moral judgement: they find it easier to make colder , more
logical decisions that would cause harm to others when they are not imagining
the consequences.
In theory, you might be able to manipulate visual imagery to improve eye
witness statements, ethical decisions, memory and learning, the list goes on,
says Pearson.
But if mental imagery is involved in so many aspects of everyday life, why don
t people like Philip have more trouble? Although people with strong mental
imagery tend to do better in memory tasks, says Pearson, people with
aphantasia still perform pretty well. They say they use semantics, or
algorithms, or geometry abstract non-visual strategies. If your brain allows
you to generate images, he says, then you ll use them to help you perform
certain tasks, and if you don t, you tend to develop other strategies that can
work just as well.
Philip agrees, I m sure my brain has compensated in other areas, he says. For
instance, he is great at impersonating other people s voices. I can imitate
anyone, I can do any kind of accent. I don t understand why other people find
that so hard. I can hear people s voices in my head as if they re really
speaking. Perhaps that s one sense making up for another.
Here and now
A visit to an online forum for people who experience aphantasia quickly reveals
that many people with the condition think the trait is beneficial. One user
believed that his aphantasia allowed him to live more in the here and now. Not
being able to picture the future [means] you can t really live in it. The same
thing about [the] past, he says. Others agreed. Because you can t relive a
moment, you cherish each moment that little bit more, says another.
Philip also finds himself focusing more on the present than the past or the
future. I don t like making plans, I find it difficult to think about the
future and forget what I need to do unless I write it down, so I tend to be
more spontaneous I m very good at working things out on the spot.
Some talk about the benefits of not having to relive trauma
Other forum members talk about the benefits of not having to relive trauma or
seeing images of scary or sad moments in their life. I have watched a
girlfriend convulse from an intentional overdose, said one person, I am
grateful I do not have a visual memory to continue to relive that trauma.
And just as we may struggle to imagine what our internal world would be like
without images, people with aphantasia can struggle to imagine what their world
be like with them. One forum user describes how she writes stories in her head
for each of her memories or descriptions of things in her life. Words are a
beautiful thing, she says. I almost feel sorry for the people replacing those
words with images. Sure images are great and all, but I love my words. If I
suddenly started picturing images and my need to describe things in my mind
diminished, I d miss it.
For Philip, well, he is still taking it all in. It s so weird that I never
thought of this before, he says, "that I never realised other people could
picture things in their imagination. Why did nobody ever mention that to me? It
blows my mind.